Sean Carroll’s Sleight-of-Hand Evasion of the Creator Part I

“See to it that no one makes a prey of you by philosophy or empty deceit…” (Colossians 2:8)

Christian philosopher Dr. William Lane Craig recently went head-to-head with theoretical physicist, Dr. Sean Carroll of Cal Tech in a public debate over the question, “Is God’s Existence More Probable Given Cosmology Data?”  This data broadly pertains to the expansion of the universe from its very first moment of time.  The 2 1/2 hour contest can be viewed at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-H6hdjpRRw.  Craig, of course argued the affirmative position while Carroll correspondingly challenged it.  However a more surprising and, I will argue dubious, aspect of Carroll’s presentation was his bolder contention that the “evidence” employed by Christians is worse than false or weak; it is, as he says, entirely irrelevant to the scientific data because religion uses the wrong vocabulary and naively seeks to address the wrong questions.

This posting does not challenge Carroll’s level of knowledge within his own field (though I hasten to add that the question at hand required his crossover from science into the other intellectual fields of philosophy and theology).  He posed a vigorous and thought-provoking challenge to Craig.  My atheist friend, Jim (we two, too, have dueled each other twice in a similar debate) recently goaded me over coffee by suggesting this video would be painful for me to watch because, as he cautioned, “Carroll demolishes your favorite apologist!”  The contest is anonymously labelled, “Sean Carroll Completely Dominates Billionaire William Lane Craig in Lopsided Debate.” Let us first of all dispose as garbage the poster’s ludicrous assertion that Craig is wealthy.  Now, turning to serious matters, over the course of my having watched the debate several times I have noticed that the list of related videos featured along the right hand border on my screen all parade the same propagandistic theme in their titles, as though Craig routinely gets beat up every time he debates.  Oh, to the contrary!  I wonder what lies behind such a pathetic level of insecurity that compels people to post such nonsense.  I advise every reader (on either side) who is interested in this topic to witness this exchange and critically analyze the arguments yourself.  In undertaking this assessment it is important to consider two matters:  First it is necessary to distinguish between the three fields of inquiry (referenced above) in the context of this exchange.  Second, it is crucial to ask whether each contestant’s treatment of these respective fields was managed correctly according to the rules of logic (e.g. scientific assertions supported by scientifically-valid evidence, with the expectation that philosophical and theological issues will be cogently framed).

By what authority, readers may ask, do I as a non-scientist pastor presume to challenge a Cal Tec scientist on these matters?  I do so by noting discrepancies between the scientific claims Carroll alleged against creation, and the faulty logical status of that battery of “evidence” that he offered in support of them (a philosophical matter).  I also highlight incidents where his theological objections (a religious matter) against the claim that the God of the Bible made the heavens and the earth fail to achieve their intended goal of dethroning God as the creative agent.  To cite here one example in service of that aim, Carroll spent considerable time (1:15) hypothesizing on how a truly reasonable god, if such were to actually exist, would have created a more “successful” product than what scientists find in the natural order.  His consequent pitting of the actuality of nature against the witness of the God of the Bible, in a manner similar to Charles Darwin (On the Origin of Species, 1^st ed. (Harvard, 1859), p.435)), leaves the field of scientific discourse behind by entering into realm of religious matters.  Hence the necessity of a pastor/theologian competently applying religious insight in a critique of Carroll’s anti-theological case.

My entire article can be accessed at my website: www.christianityontheoffense.com/articles   

We Weren't There. And it Matters Not Part II

Some people judge this delimiting reality (of only being able to see into the past) to be either a hindrance to overcome, or a nuisance that must be explained away.  There are those for example who believe the 13.7 billion year age of the universe that is implied by these light-travel times conflicts with the teaching of Genesis 1.  In order to maintain their conviction that the cosmos is really just a few thousand years old, they believe that God must have created the very beams of light in passage from all the galaxies that are radiating across the cosmos.  This proposal by certain Christians (in contradiction to Romans 1:18-20) suggests that God is deceptive with nature’s testimony as to the actual age of His creation.  Yet in fact such an ad hoc interpretation is utterly unnecessary.  In my essay, “The Biblical Demand to Take Another Look” (found at www.christianityontheoffense.com) I make the case that Genesis makes no such demand on readers to believe that the universe is 6,000 +/- years young.

Yet the point of this posting is to make a very different point from the attempt to reconcile astronomical realities with Genesis 1.  I argue to the contrary that light-travel distances and the history that that reality implies, provide us with a privileged and exciting opportunity for confidently observing the unfolding wonders of God’s creation in a manner that is entirely compatible with a very high view of the opening verse (and chapter) of the Holy Bible.

I love fireworks (except after 11 pm when I’m struggling to sleep)!  I prefer experiencing them live as opposed to looking at still photographs of them.  I enjoy feeling and hearing the booming and, for a few days, the lingering smell of the gunpowder.  But what I enjoy most is the visual experience of the entire process from the initial launch all the way to its ultimate expansive display of light against the dark sky.
 

The implications following from paragraphs 2 and 3, above, are tremendous with respect to the reality of humanity’s non-presence at creation’s beginning.  Precisely because light photons take time to cross distances, radiation from objects much farther away from us (the HEDF above) take much longer to reach the lenses of our telescopes than did nearby objects such as Polaris (the North Star) or Jupiter.  This means that as modern scientific instruments detect the range of celestial objects in between the oldest objects visible (HEDF) and our own moon, we are observing the history of the universe all the way back to its beginning.  “Observing” is the key word to this posting.  Unlike the Darwinian claim alleging to tell the history of the development of life (which demands surmising on the basis of very imperfect evidence), when we look out across the entire universe we are able to document its entire history.  We are like historians who chronicle the development of the cosmos from its birth (a very imperfect term) and infancy all the way to the present moment.  So agrees the Commission on Theology and Church Relations (CTCR) publication of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, The Natural Knowledge of God in Christian Confession and Christian Witness­, (April 2013): “Advances in astronomy during the twentieth century…led to the discovery that the universe is not static, but is expanding.  This and related discoveries thus suggest (by projecting backwards) the now generally accepted conclusion that the universe of space and time had a beginning in the finite past” (p.59, note 215).

God could freely have chosen to create the universe any way He wished.  He has the power to have brought it into being in an instant if He so desired.  Yet even young-earth (6,000 years old) Christians understand Genesis to state that creation involved time (6 days).  But following the Apostle Paul’s injunction that we read nature for what it tells us (Romans 1:18-20) we encounter the kind of data that tells us that following its absolute beginning out of nothing in the Big Bang, it has taken 13.7 +/- billion years to reach its present stage.  By the way, nothing in this data affirms Darwinism and its atheistic agenda.  Christians, in my studied opinion, make a serious mistake by resisting the time frame high-lighted by cosmology.  We ought instead to thank God deeply for such a powerful “visual” demonstration of His creative handiwork that has its analogy in the beauty we observe from the display of a firework.  Though we weren’t present for His “launching,” we can still see the entire unfolding of His artistry from our present vantage point.  Indeed, “The heavens declare the glory of God” (Psalm 19:1f).    

We Weren’t There. And it Matters Not.

“[God] stretches out the heavens like a curtain, and spreads them like a tent to dwell in.” (Isaiah 40:22, and ten other similar passages)

In his article, “What About Atheism & Agnosticism?” (The Lutheran Layman, (July-August 2014), p.3), Rev. Peter Kirby wrote with respect to the details of God’s creation, “No one was around at the beginning of the universe…to report on what happened.”  Kirby’s entire article can be read online at http://www.lhm.org/ layman/default.asp.  The implication of his statement is that the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod interpretation of Genesis need not be reconsidered because science has nothing to say about beginnings.  Yet for not only biblical reasons, but also scientific ones, he is wrong.  Although his statement is obviously true, that fact is utterly irrelevant to his assertion that modern science is ignorant about the history of the cosmos.  As we shall see, God has so constructed the laws of His universe (specifically light-travel speed) that we have the capacity to view virtually the entire history of the cosmos from the vantage point of our time.  Consequently, we don’t need to have been present at its very beginning in order to observe what happened then.  For example, although I have never actually crossed the border from Israel into Syria, a few decades ago I had a broad unrestricted view across miles of its territory as I looked out from its boundary with Israel at the Golan Heights.  Similarly, the finite aspect of the speed of light makes it possible for us to look beyond the boundary of the present time, out into the past.  I invite your initial skepticism on this matter provided you follow me on these things.  I assure you that this is no trick.

 

We can only see the moon as it was; never as it actually is.  That is how our perceptions must always be except when we are viewing local objects.  For example, when we see either a friend sitting across the table or Mount Rainier on the horizon, we effectively observe these two objects in the present moment for the reason that they are nearby.  On the other hand, when we look upwards into the heavens we are always looking into the past.  The reason for this is that light does not travel at infinite speed.  Instead, it races away at 186,000 miles per second (which seems like infinite speed compared to a Corvette)!  Indeed such a velocity is the equivalent of 7 times around the world every second.  But, again, that journey is not instantaneous.  With respect to our view of planets, stars, and galaxies, light-travel realities mean we are only able to see these individual celestial objects after light from their surfaces has traveled the entire distance between us in order to finally reach our eyes.  Except from within our solar system, astronomical distances in “light years” are the measured lapse of TIME in years taken for the light to complete the respective journeys because, again, light travel takes time.

 

According to the above considerations, in round figures (pun intended) we see our moon as it was 1.25 seconds back in time, the Sun is likewise 8 minutes so, Jupiter 40 minutes, and our image of every star in the Big Dipper involves seeing them between 80 and 100 years back in the past (before most of us were born).  Peering out to the edge of our own galaxy (we are half-way out from the center) entails looking back to 25 thousand years ago, while the view of our nearest neighboring galaxy (Andromeda) involves seeing it as it was 2.3 million years ago, and so forth and so on.  Indeed the Hubble Extreme Deep Field photo (henceforth HEDF) reveals the primitive state of those galaxies at a much, much, younger universe 13.2 billion years back into the past (take a gaze at the image at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubble_ Extreme_Deep_Field).
 

To be continued...